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Notes -
My country is being exceptional again on European polls. (If you don't want to click, it's a poll on how many agree with the question "One of my main goals in life is making my parents proud", and while in most European countries well over 70% would strongly agree or agree with this statement, and even in other Nordic countries the affirmative answer ranks in the 50% range, in Finland only 25% agree.)
Some explanations I've seen:
The word "proud", or rather its translation, just has a different, considerably more negative connotation in Finnish. Like, if hearing this question in English, the idea of "pride" I'd get would just be a beaming parent going "So proud of you, son!" while imagining the same phrased in Finnish, using the word "ylpeä" (direct translation), has much more of a connotation of an arrogant, conceited parent going around their friends going "Oh, you didn't know my son/daughter is a doctor?"
even taking this into account, the Finnish/Nordic culture of "collective individualism" (which I've discussed here) might play a role
some have just guessed that Finns tend to answer surveys like this more honestly and bluntly, actually thinking about their priorities instead of just automatically giving the pro-social answer - yes, something of a self-serving explanation
How many here would answer this question in affirmative, anyway?
Just to double check: is this the same translation that the survey used? I’d think if the connotation is positive in English and negative in Finland, then that isn’t a direct translation.
But you do raise an interesting point: it seems like we should be taking surveys that cross language barriers with even more salt than we usually do, since translations and cultural contexts affect them so much.
Do you think in reality Finns aren’t so different? Or do your second two bullets override the translation problem?
I'm not sure what question was used, but this would be one potential explanation. I cannot think of another translation for "proud", actually, at least one that wouldn't have even more of a negative connotation.
Also, the fact that the direct translation of the word that might have positive connotations in other languages but more of a negative one in Finnish might tell of a cultural difference in itself.
Indeed the exact question is
Good sample size too of >1000 for each country.
Also:
Interviewer administered questionnaire would surely bias the subject towards more socially acceptable answers. A few countries (including Finland) had some people self-administer. So might we expect those countries to answer slightly more honestly? Perhaps they controlled for this somehow.
https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/methodology-data-documentation/survey-2017/full-release-evs2017/
https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/methodology-data-documentation/survey-2017/full-release-evs2017/participating-countries-and-country-information-survey-2017/
Yes, that's a fairly awkward literal translation and would definitely tend towards being understood, at least subliminally, as "make my parents arrogant and conceited". (Even "Yksi elämäni päätavoitteista on, että vanhempani voisivat olla ylpeitä siitä, miten elämäni on sujunut" or something like that would be more neutral.)
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